Matt Yglesias has a great post documenting the GOP’s shameful support for Donald Trump over the years, and how that’s legitimized his campaign. Even worse, they still refuse to disavow him—the GOP establishment won’t promise not to vote for him if he gets the nomination.

In my view, they made a calculated bet that he would moderate his views as he got closer to office, just as in the early 1930s the NYT said that a certain German nationalist politician (who I am not allowed to name) would likely moderate his views as he got closer to office. Instead, Trump is acting more and more like a fascist, as he gets more power:

Trump warns of ‘riots’ if he’s not the GOP nominee in a contested convention

“I think you’d have riots,” Trump said on CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday.

Trump’s wins in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday put him at least halfway to the 1,237 delegates he needs to claim the nomination. But Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s win in his home state denied the real estate mogul 66 delegates in the winner-take-all primary, increasing the likelihood of a contested GOP convention this summer.

“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention,” Trump said. “But I can tell you, if we didn’t and if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically.”

“I’m representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people, in many cases, first time voters,” he added. “If you disenfranchise those people, and you say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re 100 votes short’ … I think you’d have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen.”

Trump does not seem to understand how democracy works. The whole point of conventions is to deny the nomination to a candidate who has a plurality of the delegates, but not a majority. That’s why we have conventions. It’s just about the only reason to have conventions. Their purpose is to deny the nomination to a candidate who is supported by 40% (many not even Republican), but hated by a group of 60% who split their votes among other candidates. They keep voting until someone gets a majority—those are the rules. We have conventions so that we can stop crazy candidates with mere pluralities of delegates.

His supporters (in the comment section) will insist that he’s not “advocating” violence, just “predicting” it if he fails to get the nomination. Yes, that’s right, when Trump’s hypnotized followers hear him talk about violence if the nomination is stolen from him, that would not in any way encourage them to actually go out and enact what their Great Leader says is inevitable. The leader they’ve raised their hands and pledged allegiance to. Remember Chicago 1968? Get ready for a long hot summer.

If Trump comes into the convention 100 votes short, and gets the nomination anyway, the GOP party establishment (not the voters!!) will have picked him. Actually, 60% of GOP voters will have rejected Trump. The establishment will have forced Trump down our throats despite that rejection. And America will be a country with one legitimate major party, plus the tiny Libertarian Party, and our own version of France’s National Front.

Marine Le Pen, for example, has become a poster child for the modern European far right after leading the French National Front to unprecedented success over the past few years. Many see her as the most obvious European counterpart for Trump. And yet, despite their perceived kinship, Le Pen has personally criticized Trump’s proposal to ban almost all Muslims from entering the United States.

“Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?” Le Pen said during one television interview, according to the New York Times. “I defend all the French people in France, regardless of their origin, regardless of their religion.”

So to all you people who said, “How dare you compare Trump to the National Front.” I apologize—he’s worse.

Sumner: “In my view, they made a calculated bet that he would moderate his views as he got closer to office, just as in the early 1930s the NYT said that a certain German nationalist politician (who I am not allowed to name) would likely moderate his views as he got closer to office. ” – that would be von Papen, working with Schleicher and Hidenburg. Why don’t you just say so?

Wikipedia: General Kurt von Schleicher, working with Hidenburg…. In the first round of the election held in March 1932, Hindenburg was the frontrunner, but did not have an absolute majority. In the runoff election of April 1932, Hindenburg beat Hitler for the Presidency… On 31 May 1932, Hindenburg sacked Brüning as Chancellor and replaced him with Schleicher’s suggestion, Franz von Papen. von Papen’s government openly wanted to destroy German democracy

Trump: Democrat or Fascist? Sumner has still not answered that question. He has proposed both. Does he think reality is innately contradictory?

“Their purpose is to deny the nomination to a candidate who is supported by 40% (many not even Republican), but hated by a group of 60% who split their votes among other candidates.”

-Kasich?

Seriously, Trump will most likely get the majority of the delegates, and Kasich will be at fault for it in at least some states in which the delegates are not awarded proportionately.

“The leader they’ve raised their hands and pledged allegiance to.”

-You’re talking about that 2008 “I pledge” video, right? And you do realize that Blacks have committed a lot more than their worth of political protest-related violence under the lack of discouragement of the media in recent years, and you haven’t complained about that at all? Why are you not afraid of anti-Trump violence more than pro-Trump? Trump opponents tend to be younger, after all, and one almost attacked Trump. Look at what a fascist Billary is when people stand up to hir:

Sumner, do you have some hard-on for the neocon/Dem establishment? They are guilty of all the sins you assign to Trump alone.

I, of course, have no problem with a little violence at the GOP convention if the powers that be try to steal the nomination from Trump. Same if Berniebros try to take the nomination away from Clinton (implausible as that is). Politics is, after all, just another form of violence, both organized and not. Obama has been engaging in a lot of it in Syria and Yemen. Nothing wrong with it if used for the right purpose.

And prediction markets thought Bush was the most probable candidate in September and Rubio the most probable candidate in November. Both have dropped out after realizing that they can’t win while being losers. Kasich has been buoyed by a strong New Hampshire performance and a strong win in his home state (brought to you by probable Berniebros). He still can’t win, though, because he needs to win the majority of the delegates of 8 states to be on the ballot in the first round of voting at the convention.

OT-I’ve challenged Sumner to name where ‘printing money’ (targeting some variable like NGDP) worked. He cited Israel and Australia I think, but not the numerous other regimes like Zimbabwe, the US Confederate States, Weimer Germany, etc. Below is a passage from Adair Turner’s new book that cites three such successful regimes that printed money (Turner mentions in passing Kublai Khan in China, who also had fiat money that rumor has it on occasion he just printed money without backing for it). Note in particular the Jackson and Dyson proposal, noted in an endnote.

Turner: “The colony of Pennsylvania successfully stimulated its economy with paper money creation in the 1720s. [citing Jackson and Dyson (2013) see bit.ly/1mdt7Yo – a scheme called ‘Sovereign Money’ that essentially is NGDPLT under state control] Japanese finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo used money-financed fiscal deficits to pull the Japanese economy out of severe recession between 1931 and 1936 and did so without excessive inflation.10 The U.S. Union government paid for a significant proportion of its Civil War expenditures with “greenbacks”—dollar bills simply printed by the government. The result was significant inflation (about 80% in total over the five years of the war) but not hyperinflation”

-Do you really care about the negligible fraction of the world’s Muslims who are allowed to immigrate to the U.S. as much as you signal you do? Somehow, I doubt it. What’s the difference between allowing almost no Muslims to immigrate to the U.S. and allowing no Muslims to immigrate to the U.S.? I don’t see it. And, yes, the National Front is far too pozzed on this matter. It should take a strong stance praising Donald Trump’s proposal as far better than current French policy and suggest improvements to it.

That aside, you’re projecting your own hatred of Trump on Republican voters generally. The survey research suggests that for about 13% of the electorate, the precise identity of the Republican candidate matters. Kasich does better than Rubio does better than Cruz does better than Trump. It’s a reasonable wager these are swing voters, not the sort of people who cast ballots in Republican primaries.

Even worse, they still refuse to disavow him—the GOP establishment won’t promise not to vote for him if he gets the nomination.

They’re not visibily plotting to trash their nominee in the fall. Funny thing about that.

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing “25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad” and 51% of those polled, “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.” Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.

The idea seems overly categorical. Then again, to what extent do we assume that the process of applying for a visa and waiting in a queue is sufficient in and of itself to screen out problem people?

@myself – the Jackson and Dyson plan is essentially the Chicago plan (“narrow banking”) which, when public as opposed to private in money creation, sounds suspiciously like Sumner’s NGDPLT plan, though it’s a bit different (see https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12202.pdf) Wonder what Sumner thinks of the IMF paper?

@ Tom Davies – 16. March 2016 at 20:17 – who says: “Ray, what were Weimar Germany’s and Zimbabwe’s targets for NGDP? Are you sure they had targets?” – you are not aware of our host’s thinking. He has specifically said if an NGDP target is not reached, to keep printing money (and maybe–it’s not clear from his writings–helicopter drop this money directly to consumers) until such time an NGDP target is reached. Full ‘pedal to the metal’ until a target is reached. Do you see the Weimar / Zim analogy now? Keywords: Genie, inflation, bottle, ‘put back in’. Keep in mind I believe money is largely neutral, but even I will concede that this Sumner scheme has the potential to become–if the public panics–hyperinflationary.

I am less impressed with Matt Y’s piece. First, it would not be hard to dig up Democrats saying nice things about Trump. Second, I am not sure the Republican leadership has quite the legitimising power Matt Y’s suggests. Thirdly, there is no discussion of Trump generating support because of a fairly large gap in the political market. To be fair, Matt Y has recently written about that, but it that is ultimately the crucial element: all the rest is bagatelle.

That you are willing to take a stand on Trump, and bear all this criticism really ups my opinion of you. I think it is important that you confront people who read this blog, who like to think they are looking at things rationally, with the illogic of Donald Trump.

I mean can you really call yourself a believer in libertarian ideas and support Trump? Conservative ideas? Liberal ideas? What’s left then? Nationalist Socialist? Seems to fit to me.

Lorenzo: maybe culture, maybe politics. But also perhaps the voting population suspects that the established political parties have become institutionally corrupt. Surely it is not controversial that the longer you have established political parties the more institutional corruption will become the norm.

It is too bad Bill Gates did not run, adopting certain forceful positions and a dramatic speaking style, but not scapegoating a particular group. Scott has pointed out Trump did well in certain better neighborhoods in Massachusetts. This stereotype that dumb angry white guys are voting for Trump may be incomplete.

And how is the Trump motto, “All Lives Matter,” in any way offensive?

Scott: for years I had a 1930s NYT cover, that referred to “Nazi intimidation” and that the world would soon know what the Nazi triumphs would entail. It was the same day FDR declared a bank holiday.

That’s often a problem with billionaire-to-bresident types. They seem to assume you just order people around like your employees and they’ll get their way.

jknarr, Cliff,

Scott, the only Brownshirt intimidation tactics have been from the left.It is strange how the violence is always attributed to Trump.

Seriously? Time and time again, Trump has to say it’s OK, even desirable, to beat up protesters. Why isn’t Trump charged with incitement of violence? Ordinary people would be charged. Who knows, ordinary people might even be charged with terrorism for that kind of voicing off that Trump does as a habit.

Germany (about 1/4 US population) accepted about 1 million refugees (Syrians alone) in 2015. The US,around 70,000 (total, not just Syrians). Even Sweden, pop. 1/30 of the US, accepted more Syrian refugees than the US. Same for Austria.

The ridiculous hysteria around muslims / refugees in the US begs belief. The US, “world’s indispensable nation”? Seriously?

Will dire things come to Europe because of this? Maybe. But look at history. In 1962, France pulled out of Algeria. 900,000 refugees of European descent, and another 90,000+ of Arab descent, fled to France within months (!). Nearly a million, for a country of about 50 million. And France was much poorer then. And guess what? France is still standing today. So, the US, pop 320,000,000 , overrun by 70,000 refugees? Give me a break.

So all these governors pandering to these people, and Trump to boot, is just a sign of exceptional political cowardice.

Trump supporters have been the victims of organized violence intended to infringe on their speech/assembly. Trump supporters have been the perpetrators of a few isolated cases of violence, most intended to defend their speech/assembly. No same same.

I’m a Kasich guy but it’s a bit rich when the *targets* of the Brownshirts are getting called Nazis.

900,000 refugees of European descent, and another 90,000+ of Arab descent, fled to France within months (!).

Roy Welensky, a mid-century Rhodesian politicians, described his background thus: ‘half Jewish, half Afrikaner, 100% British’. The pied noir population were a Mediterranean salad in their origins, but 100% French in their loyalties, patriotic in a way libertarian academics despise. They were an affluent and sophisticated population and absorbing them was a job placement and temporary housing problem. Algeria’s muslims are not typically ‘Arab’ but occupy positions on an Arab-Berber spectrum and are modally Francophone. See the biography of Ferhat Abbas: the educated minority among the muslims had a strong francophile strain. The muslim migrants at that time were likely people who were married to pieds noirs, or had served in the French military, or had had consequential positions in the French administration (“beni-oui-ouis”), or were proximate family members of the above.

The slum zones around Paris and many other cities are not the best advertisement for a large and continuously operating intake pipe from the Maghreb.

It’s nothing of the kind. It’s a sign that they know who their mob is. Providing sustenance for Syrian war refugees can be accomplished in Turkey. No need to import them into North America and doing so is contrary to established practice for sustaining refugees, which has emphasized proximate maintenance with an eye to eventual repatriation. Refugee relief is distinct from immigration policy. The latter is concerned with what sort of settlers are in the long-term national interest. The Republican governors are under no obligation to co-operate with the Democratic Party’s seedy virtue-signalling and vote-farming operations.

The whole point of conventions is to deny the nomination to a candidate who has a plurality of the delegates, but not a majority.

There is not been a contested convention since 1976 Republican Convention and the Parties have turned the convention from choosing a nominee into The People Choice Awards around the nominee. And both 1972 D & 1976 R chose the candidate with plurality of delegates. (And before 1972 there was not an organized Primary voting system so it is hard to claim 1968 as a good example.) Additionally, at this point Trump share of delegates and votes In March is 43% while Romney was lower at ~40% in 2012. (However, it was obvious the winner take all states in the NE would carry Romney against Santorum & Paul.)

I rather Trump not be the nominee but keeping him from being the nominee does not have an historical parallel and even without Trump’s stupid ‘threat’ of violence will not end well for the Republicans.

There is no Constitutional guarantee of a democratic process for the selection of the US president. None. It’s not in the original document and it is not in the amendments.

Oh, the amendments give the illusion of democracy, that people of all sex, race, and age over 18/17 can vote. But the Constitution is silent, save for a few general specifications on age and citizenship, on how nominees for the office are selected.

The greatest myth that both parties have perpetuated is that the voters should have a loud say in the choice of presidential nominees. As we have seen with Trump this creates an untenable circumstance. The Democrats do have their trick that party “super-delegates” can override the vote of the people. The GOP ought to do the same – for it is their party and not that of the people.

Because ‘Black Lives Matter’ discourse is in part a virtue-signalling performance, in part a con job, and in part a subterranean demand for special deference to blacks in public places. Someone saying ‘All Lives Matter’ is denying a demand for special deference and denying the BLM pushers the status they’re asserting as people with a franchise to determine what does and does not count as morally obligatory. It’s not offensive to a normal person. It is offensive to a certain sort of obnoxious knucklehead.

Berlusconi? Thaksin? never mind. Come to think of it, France too has a Trump like character, Bernard Tapie. Billionaire socialist, populist, but also endorsed the right at some point (billionaire politicians seem to support whatever). Ended up sentenced to 2 years jail for corruption. Frankly, give me an old school ‘scheming’ politician any time over these types.

As to Algeria, the point was, mass influx of refugees, can countries deal with it or not. And no, the pieds-noirs were not keen on resettling in France, and were not particularly welcomed by metropolitan France either at the time. There was a lot of grumbling. And the Harkis weren’t necessarily married to Europeans either. And the Paris banlieues were not settled by war refugees. Those rather went to the South.

I’m a bit irritated by how you loosely characterized anyone who might disagree with you as a “hypnotized” Trump supporter. It sounds a bit Krugmanic. I’m definitely not a Trump supporter, yet I’m not convinced that he was intentionally encouraging violence. Trump may be a fascist, but he is also garrulous and imprudent. I find it is just as likely that he lacked any consideration for how his message might be interpreted by his supporters.

In any case, I also fear that he will be proven correct. There is a reasonable probability of discontent given how energized (angry) his supporters are.

Your complaint is what? Berlusconi ministries have come and gone over the last 20 years. How has his performance been notably worse than the Olive Tree ministries (or the crook ministries which governed Italy from 1945 to 1993?). As for Thaksin, the military elected to wreck Thai parliamentary institutions because they found him alienating and the voting public did not. Why is that his fault?

As to Algeria, the point was, mass influx of refugees, can countries deal with it or not.

And what you refuse to acknowledge is that people are not interchangeable parts. The pieds noirs were already acculturated and loyal. Random collections of Near Eastern and North African muslims are not. Allowing flash mob migration of Muslims into Europe is a policy choice. You’ve not explained why that’s a policy choice European publics should assent to.

To call Trump a ‘fascist’ is to misunderstand both fascism–“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.–and Trump and his supporters.

Trump is a salesman, giving the customers what they think they want. If he wins there will be ‘buyer’s remorse’, but not rioting. Rioting is more the forte of Bernie’s Brigades (Chicago ’68). Trump’s supporters are the kinds of people who go to rallies with plastic bags to carry out their trash. Even the 70 year old guy who popped the anti-Trump intruder. He was just responding to a provocation, and the trespasser deserved what he got–incentives matter.

Trump is a blowhard, a braggart and a con artist. His supporters are ignorant and foolish. That’s democracy.

Uh huh. What do you call the chumps who gave you hope-and-change eight years ago (which came in the form of a motormouth dilettante lawyer)? How about a business professor who does not know political terminology or historical analogy from tiddlywinks?

mbka is a EU woman lacking logic, which explains her weak arguments to Art Deco (BTW I would not vote for Trump, but Art’s arguments are superior to mbka’s). She brings up ‘billionaire presidents’ as a bad precedent then is hurt when her examples are shown to not be so bad. Surprised she did not mention the French President of Greek Jew extract, my kind of mix, N. Sarkozy, as a proto-facist.

This is a common phenomenon. In the modern context, people on the far right generally have to really believe in it, because if you’re a mercurial power-seeker the far right is not the easy path. But far rightists who aren’t adamantium like a certain blowhard have huge incentives to throw everyone to the right of them under the bus in the attempt to defend themselves from “racist”. See Marine’s purge of her father.

Ugh, I apologize for the triple-post, wish I could edit, but I want to point out that I’m using “far right” specifically for the immigration issue. On other issues, Trump does not seem particularly “far”, and on others (eg abortion) he’s not even “right”.

1. MA has a long history of governors who are lousy presidential candidates.
2. MA remains Trumps’s strongest base of support
3. There are lots of things Trump could Make Great Again, like the Public Transit system.

The GOP made a pact with the devil when they adopted their “Southern Strategy” decades ago to win over Southern bigots from the Old Confederacy.

The GOP media strategy in the South in 1968 consisted of TV commercials which featured Roy Acuff singing ditties with refrains like “Yes! we can bring our country back but it’s up to everyone!”. Southern segregationists received no accommodation whatsoever from the national Republican Party, but this silly “southern strategy” meme has persisted among partisan Democrats because their amour-propre is built on the fictions they tell themselves. White Southerners left the Democratic Party because they had no reason to stick around anymore. The process of exodus took 4 decades (1952-94) and began under Gen. Eisenhower, who had a large base of support among voting blacks and never had any use for segregation.

agree at the least that this cycle hurts the case for mass election of leadership?

I suppose you could have the President elected by state legislators, or, perhaps, leave conventions to attend to party business and have ordinal balloting for the presidency consequent to a standard federal registration process incorporating either petitions or monetary deposits. Ordinal balloting and the alternate vote would likely (given current public opinion) give you Sanders or Kasich. Alternatively, you could restore the monarchy and attempt parliamentary government (though you’d need a better procedure for selecting the Governor-General). Then you’d get a really serious head of government like Justin Trudeau.

Do Bernie Sanders supporters have a chance at nominating their favorite Socialist? No! They are only going through the motions. The GOP has not been as crooked as the DNC but they have had their protocol of “next man up” gets the nomination. Since Reagan / Bush the GOP nominees have been Dole, Bush W, McCain and then Romney. Dole, McCain and Romney were politically DOA but the party put them forward according to its institutional protocol.

In 2016 Republican voters decided to change the protocol by flatly rejecting the GOP’s “next man up” and picking Trump. I think we can be fairly confident that by 2020 the GOP will have fixed the rules that allowed Trump to win its primaries.

Ray you have me come back ROTFL. Even the most cursory research would have brought up Hungarian aristocrat origins for Sarkozy. Yea there’s a Greek grandfather in there, and none of this matters even remotely in the above context. Then we completely go off our meds with gender-and-nationality baiting.

Art asked for more billionaire presidents. I give him some with mixed, to say the least, legacies, and he declares victory by stating that they came and went / alienated the military and the other half of the population / yet were somehow great anyway, but who cares anymore about details in these waters.

We could actually have a nuanced discussion here on billionaire presidents. Thaksin really did attempt social reform, yet also had his populist streak plus an awful drug war. He was also tin eared to the social power structures of his country. Falling out in the wake of repeated coups, mass demonstrations, and loss of life, is NOT an example of skilled politics in my book. Berlusconi, similarly, addressed valid issues at first, before becoming a joke in an orgy of cronyism mixed with absurd personal antics. I can literally see Trump before my eyes now, 5 years from now, Berlusconi-like, popping Viagra in Hearst castle surrounded by blonde vixens.

And this is why I brought up the billionaire problem here. These people tend to get some stuff done initially before descending quickly in quagmires of their own making because they don’t listen and believe they can do it all alone by decree.

A skilled politician has to address more than just the fraction of the population that elected him.

Tweed ran through several trades before settling on politics in his late 20s. He didn’t have manifest business acumen. What he excelled at was the sort of intensely personal ward politics and identifying opportunities for graft. Trump, at age 70, is 15 years older than Tweed ever lived to be; he’s a novice at politics and he’s making use of a skeletal organization and advancing through media skills.

I think we can be fairly confident that by 2020 the GOP will have fixed the rules that allowed Trump to win its primaries.

“The rules” which “allowed Trump” to “win his primaries” have been in place full force since 1980, in place for the most part since 1972, and in place in part since 1952. The utility of conventions for building relationships between political sachems is much reduced from what it was in 1948. Neither Barry Goldwater nor Ronald Reagan were the candidate of choice of the Capitol Hill / K Street nexus, and yet the trajectory of the rules continues to its equilibriam state achieved in 1980.

The culture of GOP voters gave characters like John McCain, Robert Dole, Mitt Romney, and George Bush I and II an advantage. It didn’t work for Pat Buchanan or Rick Santorum, both of whom believe something with enough conviction to withstand evidence that the majority believes something else, rendering them ‘divisive’ to the deadweight wing of the GOP electorate. So, the deadweight had no place to go.

“So logically the guy who 60 percent don’t want should be replaced with the guy 85 percent didn’t want. I’ll spend the day pondering that one.”

So logically the guy who 60 percent don’t want should be replaced with the guy who wins according to the rules.
I think the best would be a runoff vote between the two candidates with more delegates, but the point remains: if no one has a majority, none of them have a clear mandate to represent the party (and any of them can fracturate it). The same happens if no presidential candidate gets the coveted 270 ellectoral college votes. Mr. Trump (who, I think, is the best Republican option) can’t just crown himself king contrary to the rules he agreed to follow. Threatening violence to get his way is a very low blow.

(Woodpile report)
“Obama said, during a 2008 Philadelphia fund raiser, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” There was no gasp in disbelief, everyone knew it was a real threat backed by the Big Red Machine and their news-fixing journos. Later he added, “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face!”

He could safely assume the Republican leadership were mewling wusses, when not outright accomplices, and at the first hint of Bolshevik terror they’d grovel and back peddle and apologize, then go on hostile talk shows to get kicked around as an act of public contrition. They seem to like it.

By way of evidence, here are quotes from some Republican party leaders in outright support of the flash-mobs deployed to shut down Donald Trump’s appearance in Chicago. Via the Daily Mail :

Ted Cruz: “When the candidate urges supporters to engage in physical violence, to punch people in the face, the predictable consequence of that is that is escalates. Today is unlikely to be the last such incidence.”

Marco Rubio: Trump is not entirely to blame for tonight’s events but the Republican front-runner “does bear responsibility for other things that have happened at his events”

John Kasich: “Tonight the seeds of division that Donald Trump has been sowing this whole campaign finally bore fruit, and it was ugly.”

Compare these with Hillary Clinton’s statement , “The ugly, divisive rhetoric we are hearing from Donald Trump and the encouragement of violence and aggression is wrong, and it’s dangerous.” Same words. Same people. Same as always.

Clinton’s use of the word “dangerous” suggests another dimension to this. As Bill Bonner points out: “around the World Wide Web, you’ll find comments such as: “Donald Trump better beef up his security. Or he’ll end up like JFK.”” Scott Adams, a wise and seasoned observer , suspects Trump is being set up for the Kennedy cure, meaning permission is being broadcast on the carrier wave that homicidal nut cases stay tuned to. Thomas DiMassimo, the guy who rushed Trump the other day, is already a star on CNN . There’s your absolution, swag bags and a two week stay at Sea Island ain’t far behind.

Michael Sebastian at Return of Kings writes, “This past week, we’ve watched this play out before our eyes as the elites, through the media, have started to create a narrative designed to paint Trump and his supporters as violent, dangerous bigots who must be eliminated at all costs,” and, “Immediately after the cancellation, I noticed that all the networks suddenly were carrying the same story—how Donald Trump’s words provoke his followers to violence. There was nothing about the threats on social media to assassinate Trump.”

Should an assassination occur the Republican party leadership will be shocked, shocked I tell you but, well, you know. The press will take it from there, they’ll portray the perp as a tragically misguided soul stressed beyond endurance by the Mean Ol’ Donald, while informing its audience how Trump brought it on himself. Then it’s back to same as always. I’d not be surprised to learn the eulogy and blame-shift footage is already in the can with an office betting pool hanging on the cabinet door.”

@mbka – “Thaksin really did attempt social reform, yet also had his populist streak plus an awful drug war. He was also tin eared to the social power structures of his country. Falling out in the wake of repeated coups, mass demonstrations, and loss of life, is NOT an example of skilled politics in my book. ” – I lived for a while in Thailand, and what you say is true: the people who were pissed off in Thailand in the north, where most people support Thaksin since Thaksin caters to the farmers (with rice price support or money bribes), were the drug dealers. Thaksin ran or promoted or otherwise aided and tolerated anti-drug death squads (common in Asia; here in the Philippines the former mayor of Davao and now presidential candidate is openly proud of running or tolerating anti-drug death squads in Davao), and it pissed off the policeman and politicians who are in the Golden Triangle drug business. Like Fox with Mexico, perhaps he should have let ‘sleeping dogs lie’? If that’s your argument, it’s probably sound given the economics of the drug trade (namely, it’s often done by policeman or powerful rich business people).

“Berlusconi, similarly, addressed valid issues at first, before becoming a joke in an orgy of cronyism mixed with absurd personal antics” – Italian politics since the says of Rome are patronage and cronyism. If B* addressed ‘valid issues’ isn’t that enough? After all, with Thaksin you argue for not upsetting the status quo, but now you want B* to become as clean as the Northern League? Make up your mind girl… As for orgies, that’s pretty cool. You’ll never understand as a woman, but if a man can have an orgy at B*’s age, that’s pretty awesome IMO (assuming none of the women were coerced of course).

Trump is a reflection of underlying political currents, not their cause. Regardless of what happens with his campaign, liberals are running out of people to lie to, and this obviously has them very, very concerned.

There’s no reason to consider plurality voting systems the more democratic. They’re typically strictly less democratic than systems like approval voting or independent runoffs, the latter of which is close to the Republican convention voting system (less democratic in the sense of the expected value of a vote). Still, that’s assuming we care about having the most democratic system anyways. In an age where having the loudest voice is no longer a function of experience or knowledge or even pedigree but of free time and the ability to entertain, it’s hard to have faith in the democratic process anymore.

Regarding Trump – while he’s consolidated the white racist vote, there are many of his suppporters who do not fall in that camp. Plenty of them are just dim-witted, and it’s not so much that they don’t care about policy as it that they have no knowledge of facts to judge his claims on in the first place. To them, Trump’s proposals are appealing in their simplicity – more nuanced but honest proposals can simply be dismissed as “political correctness”.

What made you think they were racist? And if so, so what? Will they bring back Jim Crow?

And no, I’ve never been to a Trump rally, although I voted for Trump. I’ve seen some Trump rallies, though. I was not impressed. Trump is high-energy, surely, but he is sorely lacking in policy knowledge.

It’s funny that people tend to either blame Donald for the violence entirely (because he has in fact encouraged violence) or absolve him entirely (because the protesters have in fact violently attacked his supporters and generally provoked them). Binary logic is a sign of our times, I suppose, but it should be obvious both are behaving very badly.

As I’ve said, it’s fairly pointless to argue over Donald, reason doesn’t really come into it. I think Ace said it best: once you see Donald as running a con on the GOP, you can’t unsee it. It’s like one of those Magic Eye things — you don’t see it until you really, seriously look at it, but once you do everything suddenly coheres and the picture makes sense.

Perhaps Trump is undesirable as President. However, he is right on about stopping all Islamic immigration to the United States. Since 9-11-01 I have studied the Koran, the Hadith, several books on Islamic history and biographies of Mohamed authored by Muslims. I now understand that the recent mass murders in Paris were proper imitations of the beliefs and lifestyle lived and advocated by Mohamed. From the perspective of a Muslim who is actually following the Koran and loving and imitating the life of Mohamed, as they are supposed to do, those murderers were “good Muslims”. We do want “good Muslims” in the United States for their adherence to the teachings and life style of Mohamed shall result in the violent deaths of Americans. There is no means to screen out the “good” Muslims from those who are more lackadaisical about their faith and we cannot prevent the so-called “moderate” Muslims from coming to the United States and then choosing to imitate the life and teachings of Mohamed. So, please, criticize Donald Trump but support his policies that are simply common sense measures to protect our nation.

The Donald is the Andrew Jackson for our time. Except without a shred of previous public service. So a Virtual Andrew Jackson — the uncouth, braggart populism without any actual substance.

He is also the weakest Republican nomination frontrunner in quite some time. Clearly, he is exploiting a gap in the political market, but one should be careful about how big that gap is.

He is a Brand (Donald Trump[tm]) seeking to take over a Brand (Republican[tm]). The trouble is, the latter Brand will carry a lot of rusted on votes with it. In an odd sort of way, it is an example of the openness of the US political system, given that elsewhere he would have to start his own Party–a much harder path.

That’s just not true. I viewed Trump as a con man in the beginning. Now I realized he is the only democratic choice the GOP got this year. So you can in fact unsee it. I did.

It’s funny. No one said W. was a con man even though he was. He was also clearly a puppet of his advisors. As soon as he won the election the Neocons took over. And he was remarkably unintelligent. When he talked you always had to be afraid that he could not finish the most simple sentences. Still hardly anyone back then said he was unfit for being President.

Trump is neither of those things. He’s not stupid. He can talk. He’s not the puppet of some master. And you can be sure that you get Trump when you elect Trump. So he isn’t exactly a con man either.

“So logically the guy who 60 percent don’t want should be replaced with the guy 85 percent didn’t want. I’ll spend the day pondering that one.”

The fact that you don’t understand the difference between a plurality and a good choice is pretty sad. I mean it’s middle school level political science.

Let’s try again derivs. Say Lyndon LaRoache runs in the GOP primary and gets 2%. All the other 99 candidates get 1%. You want Lyndon because 2% is better than 1%. Seriously? That’s your logic?

Do I need more examples or are you beginning to understand why we have conventions, and don’t automatically give it to the person with a plurality. BTW, the Constitution doesn’t allow a person to become President with a plurality of the electoral votes. But maybe the framers were also stupid.

Foosion, You said:

“Republican primary voters overwhelmingly support ban on Muslims.”

Why is everyone around her trying to turn me into a Democrat? If I read that 65% of GOP voters don’t believe in evolution, am I supposed to become a creationist?

Steve, I’m fine with him as Governor of Massachusetts, which is just a ceremonial position with no power. He would not be able to do any damage.

Christian, You said:

“Trump is neither of those things. He’s not stupid. He can talk.”

Even better, I recall that Trump said he had a brain, and that he knew words.

What PC leftist drivel! I heard about this blog due to adverts from the Independent Institute about Sumner’s new book (which does sound interesting).
Had no idea the guy was a raving multicultural loony.

Le front national are heroes, the one party fighting the Third World INVASION of France. Perhaps Sumner cannot distinguish an invasion when it is imposed upon an innocent people. What is happening in Europe and wrt the US, our own unwanted immigration invasion, is CULTURAL/RACIAL GENOCIDE. And we whites are finished tolerating this in oppressed silence!

Trump has done nothing violent, but evil leftists have done violence to him and his supporters. Love how Lefty Sumner tries to equate Trump’s heroic refusal to be bullied by these agitators with the threats and criminal actions of the No Fee Speech leftists themselves (next time they try to silence us, we will be ready – with brass knuckles, weighted gloves, hidden batons, and whatever else is necessary to combat the nonwhite/antiwhites and communist subversives).

Liberty is a precious thing, which cannot survive inundation by cultural and racial aliens from amoral familist and socialist cultures. The West is the incubator of liberty, and liberty here will only survive so long as we remain RACIALLY WHITE. I guess that is something liars and traitors like Sumner are congenitally incapable of grasping.

The company is better when you don’t have a mouthy faculty member unable to distinguish between the author of The Doctrine of Fascism and a New York real estate developer who argues we negotiate bad trade deals and we should enforce the immigration laws.

Do I need more examples or are you beginning to understand why we have conventions, and don’t automatically give it to the person with a plurality.

It’s characteristic of first-past-the-post systems that the haul of the leading contenders is exaggerated in a multi-party contest. The Republican primary donneybrook is an odd hybrid which has features of a first-past-the-post parliamentary election. John McCain managed to win 72% of the delegates with 47% of the popular ballots in 2008. The distribution of support among the main contenders may be such this year that you have a hung convention, with no candidate commanding a majority in the first instance. You have 300 delegates chosen as we speak who were unpledged or pledged to candidates who have left the race and where Kasich or Cruz supporters go when their man has withdrawn remains an open question.

Isn’t it much more likely they simply expected him to fade like every other outsider candidate over the years?

Not sure who counts as an ‘outsider’ candidate in your mind. Barry Goldwater won his nomination contest in 1964, Ronald Reagan nearly did so in 1976, and I do not think Pat Robertson (1988), Alan Keyes (2000), or Ron Paul (2008, 2012) were ever leading candidates much less in danger of winning the nomination. Who did you have in mind? Pat Buchanan? Steve Forbes? Mike Huckabee?

“Let’s try again derivs. Say Lyndon LaRoache runs in the GOP primary and gets 2%. All the other 99 candidates get 1%. You want Lyndon because 2% is better than 1%. Seriously? That’s your logic?”

Actually, as per your example, I agree with you completely.
It’s as the population gets smaller and the percentage spread gets wider that I think weighting must shift more towards respecting the percentage spread. I’d say moving towards 40% in a group of 4 is somewhere about that point. Crossing 45% with a 20% spread and I’d feel much stronger. Obviously suggesting the guy with 11% in a group of 10 is idiotic. 2% in a field of 100 is hilarious.

“BTW, the Constitution doesn’t allow a person to become President with a plurality of the electoral votes. But maybe the framers were also stupid.”

Nah, they were pretty damn enlightened if you ask me. Particularly a fan of duel federalism so I see how electoral voting came to be. Paranoia, self interest, and lack of trust are great things to bring to a table when writing documents/contracts such as our founding fathers wrote.
Jump forward 200+ years though and I actually would have no problem with a general popular vote. Maybe ’cause I never lived anywhere I felt my vote mattered.

Christian List — That’s because you aren’t paying attention. Trump first said he would deport everyone, and build a wall, and then let them all back. It never made any sense, logistically or as a policy, especially when he proposed banning Muslim citizens from returning. He then said he would expand H1Bs, then said he wouldn’t, then told the NYT behind closed doors that he never meant any of it. Given that Donald used illegal immigrant labor, legal immigrant labor for jobs for which 94% of Americans were turned down, and operated a pretty blatant H1B scam at his “model agency,” only Donald’s last position makes any sense.

All politicians are somewhat self-interested and disingenuous. Not all politicians appear to wake every day as a tabula rasa upon which to project whatever voters want to hear this morning.

But as I said, it’s pointless to debate this, if you didn’t already know the above you’ll either refuse to believe it or rationalize it away. Shrug. You’ll all be graduating from Trump University one way or another, I’m just here for the lawlz.

Art, Comparing Trump to Reagan? Reagan was a two time governor of California, whereas Trump was a loony “birther” before running for President

The salient category was ‘outsider’ v. ‘insider’. That does not refer to the policy preferences or the biography of the candidates, but rather to the disposition of the Capitol Hill / K Street / Establishmentarian nexus toward the candidate. (And, while we’re at it, I was attempting an exegesis of the other fellow’s catagories, not offering a taxonomy of my own).

If I we’re going to compare Reagan to Trump, I’d start with attempting to parse the distinction between a union official who’d been a public executive with someone who’d presided over a diversified business concern. How that differs is interesting to contemplate. Harry Truman thought Eisenhower would be bedeviled by the differences between the military and a civilian elected office, but that proved not to be the case.

Reagan himself was not a highly intelligent man, but he had an abnormal measure of intellectuality for a man of normal range intelligence: he was interested in ideas and had spent some time educating himself and playing around with them. An aspect of his divorce from Jane Wyman was that that disagreeable woman could not abide his public-affairs table talk anymore; Nancy Davis, more congenial and with a satisfactory liberal education, could.

I think we all remember when Reagan bragged about all the happily married women he’d slept with.

And remember when Reagan dodged the draft with fake heel spurs, called George H.W. Bush a fake war hero, and suggested he would order the military to commit war crimes such as targeting the families of terrorists?

And who can forget that timeless moment when Reagan talked for several minutes about how ugly Geraldine Ferraro’s face was and then called James Baker a “p****y”?

I think that was just before The Gipper announced he would be neutral on Israel, that “Islam hates us” and that our Mideast policy would be “take the oil.”

Bellman: still, that’s assuming we care about having the most democratic system anyways.

Ding ding ding! Exactly right. The first thing the Founders did after drafting the Constitution was attach a bunch of “Congress shall not…” limits on the country’s democratic passions. Liberty > democracy.

An approval system makes the most sense, I think, but more likely the GOP will just add superdelegates, like the Dems.

@Art Deco
You are exactly right about Reagan and Goldwater. And Gingrich says pretty much the same thing:

“In truth, the two most likely Republican nominees both represent a widespread rebuke to party elites. With Donald Trump and Ted Cruz having won 80 percent of the delegates chosen so far, it is time for the elites to accept that ordinary Republicans — their own voters — want an insurgent outsider.

In the event of a Trump nomination, the question will be whether the party elites suicidally do to their nominee what they did to Barry Goldwater in 1964 or come around to supporting him, as they did with Ronald Reagan in 1980. It’s easy to forget that the establishment similarly disliked Reagan, whom they viewed as an outsider, before he became a Republican hero.

In 1964, the anti-Goldwater elites at the top of the party not only caused the defeat of their own party’s nominee for president because they despised him so intensely; they also crushed House and Senate Republicans in the process.

The speech Mitt Romney gave recently was a discouraging indication in this regard. Its personal vitriol and nastiness about Trump would be difficult to walk back.

I am confident that either Trump or Cruz would seek to work with the establishment after winning the nomination and potentially the presidency. I am not nearly as confident that the establishment would work with the party’s eventual nominee.”

@TallDave
So you are telling me what I already know: That Trump gets more and more moderate on immigration officially. How in the word is this a bad thing? I always said look what he does in private by the way. In private he always employed foreigners. That’s good policy.

You also care way to much about swear words. I don’t care about that at all. I care about policy. And regarding real policy Reagan did a lot of bad things, too. For example:

Reagan illegally sold weapons to Iran. Reagan voted against the Anti-Apartheid Act. Reagan ignored AIDS. Reagan fought against civil rights for African Americans and voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Reagan participated in witch hunts against other actors and testified against them in front of “the House Un-American Activities Committe”. Reagan made jokes like: “I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

Just to name a few things. So far Trump enacted no policies. So we can’t really tell what he’s going to do. We have to wait and see.

At this point it’s too late anyway. Trump got too many votes already. It’s like Gingrich said: The GOP elites need to align with him or they commit suidice.

Reagan illegally sold weapons to Iran. Reagan voted against the Anti-Apartheid Act. Reagan ignored AIDS. Reagan fought against civil rights for African Americans and voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Reagan participated in witch hunts against other actors and testified against them in front of “the House Un-American Activities Committe”. Reagan made jokes like: “I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

Arms sales to Iran would have been politically unpopular but not unlawful per se. What was unlawful was making use of a set of shell accounts to divert funds to the Nicaraguan insurrection. Nothing definitive has emerged that Reagan knew about the diversion of funds.

Mr. Reagan was an executive in both Sacramento and Washington. He did not vote for or against legislation, but did occasionally veto it; the legislation you’re referring to was a fashionable bit of business of no importance.

The federal government spent gobs of medical research money on AIDS through both the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases over the period running from 1981 to 1989, not to mention apporpriations to the Centers for Disease Control. The bitch that Reagan ‘ignored’ AIDS was humbug; the gay lobby wanted displays of attention from him that he never extended; the gay lobby was infuriated with Mayor Koch for not turning over to them the keys to the city treasury. Neither Reagan nor Koch were at fault.

Mr. Reagan was a private citizen prior to 1967 and a state executive thereafter. He was not implicated in votes ‘for’ or ‘against’ any sort of civil rights legislation, much less federal legislation, during the period of time in question. Barry Goldwater was a critic of the civil rights legislation pending in 1964 on libertarian, federalist/constitutionalist, and decentralist grounds. Although Reagan was in tune with Goldwater at the time, this wasn’t a priority for Reagan at any point in his career in either public relations or politics. The one thing he did confront as a public official was open housing legislation, of which he was critical on libertarian grounds, as it is an infringement on freedom of contract and an imposition not on businesses but individual households.

There were no witch hunts, except in liberal mythology, and the new line among red haze historians is not that there was no Soviet influence, but that Communist agents were benign. Hollywood, various unions, the publishing industry, the State department, and sections of the Treasury department had Communists working in them to serve the interests of the Party and of Soviet Russia. Melvyn Douglas’ political activities at the time were in tune with Reagan’s. The concern at the time was that crypto-Communists in gatekeeper positions were preventing films from being made which would damage the image of Soviet Russia in the eyes of theatregoers.

In 1964, the anti-Goldwater elites at the top of the party not only caused the defeat of their own party’s nominee for president because they despised him so intensely; they also crushed House and Senate Republicans in the process.

No. Over the period running from 1953 to 1965, the general public was quite satisfied with its political leadership. Gen. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, all benefited from this, enjoying surveyed approval of north of 70% of the public much of the time. In the years since 1965, presidents have enjoyed such deference only episodically and fairly briefly. During the year or so prior to the election in November 1964, Johnson had approval ratings on that scale. Goldwater did perform marginally worse than did Adlai Stevenson in 1956. How the 1964 election differed from that of 1956 was that the losing party was shellacked all the way down the ticket. Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney did not have any interest in buggering Congressman X and cannot be held responsible for that.

Christian List: Don’t be low-information. Trump’s not moderating, he’s lying. Or, possibly, he simply cannot remember what his positions are. I don’t think we should rule that out nor can we totally discount the possibility he does not even care what his positions are.

Trump 1) had his donations “redirected” by ADL because they despise him 2) was told off by the Mormons’ main newspaper because they also despise him and 3) in polling, is now losing Utah, Utah, to Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton! Losing Utah! To Clinton!Utah! Clinton!

There was one poll, done by a newspaper, which showed Clinton with a notional lead and nothing more (and with a quarter of the Utah electorate undecided). I’m sure that pleases you, but it means very little.

National polls show Trump within striking distance of Clinton, and have shown that consistently.

I can read national polls and you cannot. I also know that polls are all over the place on any given question and never take a single poll particularly seriously. Listen to me, and I’ll teach you how to be neither stupid or annoying. It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.

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Welcome to a new blog on the endlessly perplexing problem of monetary policy. You’ll quickly notice that I am not a natural blogger, yet I feel compelled by recent events to give it a shot. Read more...

Bio

My name is Scott Sumner and I have taught economics at Bentley University for the past 27 years. I earned a BA in economics at Wisconsin and a PhD at Chicago. My research has been in the field of monetary economics, particularly the role of the gold standard in the Great Depression. I had just begun research on the relationship between cultural values and neoliberal reforms, when I got pulled back into monetary economics by the current crisis.